leftwikiaorg-20200213-history
2002
2001 2002 2003 Events * The Year of Pathological Lying by Officials of the second Bush administration. * Michael Moore's documentary film Bowling for Columbine is released. * Film Cidade de Deus or City of God is released. * Charles Freeman publishes The Closing of the Western Mind. * Joe Klein publishes The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. * Jean Baudrillard publishes The Spirit of Terrorism. * U.S. Supreme Court decides that capital punishment is no longer constitutional for offenders with mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia 122 S.Ct. 2242. * China's population is 1,284.53 million. * Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram is founded. Timeline January * January: With a little help from his friends, 18 year old Juneau, Alaska high school student Joseph Frederick unfurls Bong Hits 4 Jesus banner across the street from his school during the Winter Olympics Torch Relay. Principal Deborah Morse races across the street and off school property to seize the expression of First Amendment Freedom. She later punishes him with a 10 day suspension when he refuses to reveal the names of his friends. Her absurd overreaction results in what eventually becomes the U.S. Supreme Court case of Morse v. Frederick. * January 1: European Union launches single currency and leads to eventual retirement of 11 national currencies at the end of June 2002. British pound is not included. * January 8: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells C-SPAN television call-in audience: "We all hope, and I know they hope, that we'll be able to wind up this task (War in Afghanistan) in the months ahead." February * February 12: Darwin Day * February 14: CIA (WINPAC) reports that intelligence about the supposed Iraq-Niger uranium deal lacks crucial details. March * March 22: Israeli military re-occupation of Ramallah in the West Bank, which had been under Palestinian rule since 1995. * March 26: Russian Army Col. Budanov, commander of 160 Tank Regiment, abducts, rapes and kills 19 year old Chechen Elza Kungaeva. * March 27: Arab Summit widely unattended by heads of state. April * April 16: Facility 1391 comes into official existence on a secret military base in Israel, although it has been around for much longer as a place to itnerrogate/torture Palestinians and Lebanese. Operated by IDF's intelligence agency Unit 504. * April 18: Displaying his usual ignorance of history President George W. Bush describes Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace." Sharon's pacifism was not much in evidence during the Massacre at Sabra and Shatila. * April 21: Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro visits Yasukuni Shrine. * April 27: Retired Russian Navt Reserve Officer Islam Sgeikh-Ahmedovich Hasuhanov is arrested by FSB in Shali. Tortured to confess by beatings and injections of psychtropic drugs for 6 months. May * May: Second Bush adminsitration formally renounces the Rome Statute that creates the International Criminal Court. * May 6: Volkert van der Graaf assassinates Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. * May 12: Chechen female suicide-bomber blows up temporary interrogation center in Znamenskaya, Chechnya. * May 13-14: Neuroethics is born in a conference sponsored by the Charles W. Dana Foundation at Stanford University in San Francisco. June * June: TV journalist Tim Lopes is shot to death in Brazil. * Arson attack by rightwing extremists on an abortion provider in Texas. * June 14: Suicide car bomb attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi kills 11 and wounds 51. July * July 1: International Criminal Court officially comes into existence. * July 4: U.S. government announces that Britons Moazzam Begg and Ferooz Abbasi are on the initial list of 6 who could face the death penalty, although neither charges nor exact details of the tribunals have been released by the US. Both men are accused of being al-Qaida terrorists. * July 6: Afghan Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir is assassinated by Afghan warlords. * July 17: British scientists demonstrate for first time that genetically modified DNA material from crops is finding its way into human intenstinal bacteria. * July 18: U.S. government agrees to suspend controversial military tribunal proceedings against Britons held at Guantanamo Bay, pending talks with British legal officials. August * August 2: President George W. Bush signs the American Servicemember's Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA) which restricts U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court. Result: the international humanitarian law of war does not apply to those seving in U.S. military uniform or, more improtantly for the neo-cons, to the civilians who give them orders to commit war crimes, perhaps Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolofowitz etc. * August 26: V.P. Dick Cheney tells convention of the Veterans of Forteign Wars that, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Cheney lied. September * September 3-10: Meeting of the Assembly of States Parties ("Assembly"), governing body of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. * September 8: VP Richard B. "Dick" Cheney repeats the Mohammed Atta in Prague privarication on NBC's Meet the Press: "We have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack." * September 19: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells theSenate Armed Forces Committee that Saddam Hussein, "has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including anthrax, botulism toxin, and possibly including VX, sarin, and mustard gas. His Iraqi regime has an active program to acquire nuclear weapons....We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction....Iraq has these weapons." Rumsfeld lied. October * October 2-22: Sniper shootings in Washington, DC area. * October 7: Second Bush adminsitration issues unclassified White Paper: Irag's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs. This document claims that "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction programs in violation in defience o0f UN resoltuions and sanctions." * October 7: DEA reschedules buprenorphine from a schedule V drug to a schedule III drug * October 10: Congress passes a resolution authorizing military force against Iraq, passing 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. * October 10: U.S. House of Representatives passes Resolution 296 giving the second Bush adminsitration authority to use military force against Iraq on a vote of 296 to 133. * October 11: U.S. Senate passes Resolution 296 giving the second Bush adminsitration authority to use military force against Iraq on a vote of 77 to 23. * October 11: Former President Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize. * October 12: Terrorist bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali kill 202 people, including seven Americans. * October 25: Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone dies in an airplane crash. See Assassination by Aircraft Accident. November * November: Severe Respiratory Syndrome or SARS epidemic begins in Guangdong. * November 4: United States elections, 2002 - Riding the 9/11-driven popularity of George W. Bush and banging the drumbeats of war against Iraq, Republicans recapture the majority in the Senate, and widen their majority in the House of Representatives. * November 17: Code Pink begins a 4 month peace vigil at the White House. * November 19: 5 Palestinians killed as Israeli army moves through the West Bank town of Tulkarem, in an apparent attempt to capture al-Aqsa Brigades leader Tarek Zaghal. * November 21: Palestinian suicide bomber kills 11 people, half them children, on a crowded bus in Jerusalem. * November 22: Ian Hook, a 50 year old British UN official and an 11-year-old Palestinian boy die after Israeli soldiers storm a Jenin refugee camp. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised that no mercy would be shown: "Anyone who harms Israel, a little or a lot, will have his hand chopped off...I have ordered the security establishment to take all steps to harm those who try to harm us, their accomplices and their handlers." * November 25: Pres. George W. Bush grants the first "pardon" to the first female turkey pardoned on Thanksgiving. Her name is Katie, and she is named for the daughter of the turkey growers federation. Bush fails to discern thesex of the bird and continues to refer to it as 'he' throughout the ceremony. * November 25: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw tells the House of Commons during debate on Resolution 1441 he hoped the chamber could vote 'before any military engagement' against Iraq. * November 29: Saburo Ienaga 家永 三郎 dies. December * December: Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez organize a general strike that shuts down PdVSA, the state owned oil company. Chavez responds by taking effective control of PdVSA and installing his own managers. * December 7: The Iraqi government of Saddham Hussein produces its own weapons of mass destruction dossier, 12,000 page document, under UN Resolution 1441. * December 21: Trent Lott resigns as Republican Senate leader following insensitive remarks about segregation-era America. His fall from power is attributed to outrage stoked by the liberal blogosphere, and is the first demonstration of their power.